Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On Immunomedics, Inc. (IMMU)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 823 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 3100 level. Stocks kept going up since then. In this article we look at how hedge funds traded Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.

Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) has experienced an increase in hedge fund sentiment lately. Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) was in 48 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 38. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with IMMU holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that IMMU isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

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What have hedge funds been doing with Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU)?

Heading into the third quarter of 2020, a total of 48 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 78% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards IMMU over the last 20 quarters. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor), managed by Behzad Aghazadeh, holds the number one position in Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU). Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor) has a $930.3 million position in the stock, comprising 18.4% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by William Leland Edwards of Palo Alto Investors, with a $183.7 million position; 11% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish comprise Panayotis Takis Sparaggis’s Alkeon Capital Management, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and Jeremy Green’s Redmile Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor) allocated the biggest weight to Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU), around 18.39% of its 13F portfolio. Palo Alto Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 11.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IMMU.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Redmile Group, managed by Jeremy Green, created the most outsized position in Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU). Redmile Group had $123.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital also made a $60.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new IMMU investors: Samuel Isaly’s OrbiMed Advisors, Manfred Yu’s Acuta Capital Partners, and Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Advisors.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Royal Gold, Inc (NASDAQ:RGLD), Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (NYSE:MBT), SEI Investments Company (NASDAQ:SEIC), Amdocs Limited (NYSE:DOX), ON Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:ON), InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (NYSE:IHG), and Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ:PEGA). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to IMMU’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $482 million. That figure was $2295 million in IMMU’s case. SEI Investments Company (NASDAQ:SEIC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (NYSE:IHG) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IMMU is 90. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks returned 33% in 2020 through the end of August but still managed to beat the market by 23.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on IMMU as the stock returned 25.7% since the end of June and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.